Addressing the needs of students and holding teachers accountable are vital to fixing the American education system.

With a global economy rapidly changing and demanding new skills, education should be a top priority for both Democrats and Republicans.

Unfortunately, this topic has not received a lot of attention in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, knows just how important education is for the future leaders of our nation and the world. She recently spoke with Roland Martin, host of NewsOne Now, about the state of the American education system.

She told Martin, “People are seeing evidence of the quick fix doesn’t work.”

“What we really need to do is four or five things” to get this nation’s institution of education back on track, Weingarten cautioned. The actions that need to be taken are “hard to do.”

The President of the American Federation of Teachers then detailed her list of things educators must do to get things moving in the right direction for our children in K-12.

Meet the needs of individual children

Teacher accountability

Engage children through instruction

Address students’ well-being

Weingarten, who runs a charter school in the South Bronx, said it’s vitally important to deal with students’ well-being, because nearly “half the kids in public schools are poor and two-thirds of the achievement gap is because of social economic issues.”